Arctic shipping traffic is on the increase. One day, these ships will be autonomous. New technology that can remove rain, snow and fog from the images produced by the ship’s cameras and sensors will increase safety in extreme conditions.
Research institutions from Norway and other countries have collected a great amount of data from the northern oceans in recent years. Many people want access to this information.
Nineteenth-century Norwegian technology helped bring large whale populations to the brink of extinction. Can 21st-century technology help save them?
Arctic researchers have travelled north to study ice and life in the Arctic Ocean. They discovered a creature at a depth of 3500 metres, a “dumbo octopus” dancing in the deep waters in a ballerina’s skirt.
For the first time ever, researchers have been able to track eight fin whales in near real time for five hours, as they swam along a stretch of fibre-optic cable line in the Arctic. The breakthrough suggests that fibre-optic cable networks could be harnessed to help prevent whale deaths by ship strikes.
The ice sheet in Queen Maud Land in East Antarctica is not stable. Large amounts of ice have melted in the past, most recently as 5,000 years ago.
This summer, a coalition of researchers led by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology reported the first-ever use of a fibre-optic cable network to eavesdrop on whales in the Arctic. Now they suggest these networks be used to establish a low-cost global ocean-earth observatory.
The Earth’s oceans are crisscrossed with roughly 1.2 million km of fibre optic telecommunication cables — enough to girdle the planet 30 times. Researchers have now succeeded in using fibre in a submarine cable as a passive listening system, enabling them to listen to and monitor whales.
NTNU researchers from AMOS, the Centre for Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems, used small satellites and subsea robots — and everything in between — to study marine life in Svalbard’s Kongsfjorden in a first-ever experiment in May.
What researchers are learning about the fate of chemicals in the Arctic, and how what they’re learning is changing international law and providing life-saving advice.
A new app under development is using deep learning and artificial intelligence to classify different kinds of sea ice. People snapping photos during Arctic cruises and uploading them to the new app could someday help prevent Titanic -scale disasters.
The Arctic’s once impenetrable ice cap is melting away, with profound consequences for everything from ocean circulation patterns to fish numbers and diversity. The Nansen Legacy Project, including NTNU biologists, chemists and engineers, is working to better understand what these changes mean for the Barents Sea and the Arctic Basin
Climate change in the Arctic means more winter rain, and consequently more rain falling on snow. The result can be a buildup of ice under the snow, which can wreak havoc with arctic ecosystems.
We know that tiny marine creatures in the Arctic respond to weak light from the Moon or the northern lights during the polar night. Now researchers have learned that artificial light from research vessels can also have a negative effect.
Svalbard’s cold climate means that its glaciers are solid and frozen to the ground. This allows for winter travel into unique ice caves that contain plants and material that froze into the glacial ice as it formed.
Help is not just a phone call away if you have an accident in the Arctic. That’s why the far northern Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is establishing an educational and research centre for Arctic safety.
Every schoolchild knows about Rudolph the Reindeer and his magic red nose. But Rudolph’s real-life counterparts really do have a magic nose. The colder it is, the better it is in keeping the animals warm and hydrated.
The last week of January 2012 brought wild weather to the Norwegian arctic island archipelago of Svalbard and its largest town, Longyearbyen. A new cross-disciplinary study provides a comprehensive look at the effects of this extreme weather event on everything from town infrastructure to the natural environment.
The Norwegian arctic island archipelago of Svalbard offers scientists the chance to investigate some of the most intriguing – and perplexing – puzzles facing the high north.
What happens when animals in harsh environments are exposed to extreme weather? Scientists found that extreme icing caused widespread die-offs in one arctic animal community. Climate change may cause more such extremes.
